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Although transportation and logistics are
the leaders in wireless deployment, the retail sector is close behind. That's
partly due to the logistics and distribution issues that retailers face, the
same ones as transportation and logistics companies. So it's no surprise that
many larger retailers -- some estimates are as high as 90% -- have deployed
wireless LANs in their receiving and storage facilities at their outlets and
stores. Their staffs can then scan goods using wireless handheld scanners as
they come in to automatically update inventory and verify deliveries are
complete and accurate. "More and more, they're not building a store without
building a wireless infrastructure," says Frank Riso, director of business
development for retail at Symbol Technologies, the dominant provider of wireless
handheld scanners.

But retailers are finding that wireless
can do even more than serve the back rooms. And with the wireless LANs already
in place, adding wireless access points and devices in the rest of the store is
simple. Symbol Technologies, which has the vast majority of the wireless scanner
market (at least two thirds), sees strong movement to wireless deployment in two
key areas:

Registers, which can be made mobile
for better customer service as traffic changes within a store's departments
and sectors.

Kiosks, which can help provide more
customer self-service options, such as bridal and gift registries, online
configuration for apparel and electronics, and even checkout.

Riso estimates that about a quarter of
midsize and large retailers have at least pilot programs to test these
front-of-store wireless applications. For example, Macy's department store in
New York's Herald Square uses mobile registers -- they're on wheels -- to add
cashiers quickly as needed during sales and other customer peak times. Riso
expects supermarkets and discount stores to use the same kind of registers for
sidewalk sales and for temporary springtime garden and December Christmas tree
"departments" set up in front of the store or in the parking lot. The cost is
small, about $300 to $500 to add the client bridge hardware to the
register.

In Europe, several large grocers are
testing wireless self-checkout, where customers use a PDA to scan items, then
have the total deducted from a checking account. This approach has gotten little
acceptance in the U.S., Riso says, because while Europeans are used to bagging
their own groceries and don't expect any checkout service, Americans are long
accustomed to being waited on at the checkout. Europeans are also more used to
using PDAs and data-enabled cell phones, though even there usage beyond text
messaging is low. In the U.S., Kmart has a more amenable approach: self-checkout
kiosks, which use the same kind of price-code scanners as a standard checkout
stand and the same kind of debit terminal -- it's just the the customer rings up
the sales and bags the goods. No mobile device needed, whether yours or the
store's. Naturally, store staff monitor the checkout kiosks to make sure no one
bags goods that haven't been paid for -- that'd be harder to monitor if
customers could use mobile devices.

Self-service gift-registry and
custom-configuration kiosks -- sometimes wired, sometimes wireless -- are used
in many stores, including Target, several electronics retailers, and several
music retailers. These could also be used for customer price checks if scanners
were attached.

While Riso says that retailers "were very
concerned about security" for wireless systems that handle customer transaction
data, most of those concerns were addressed last year through the deployment of
access and data security protocols such as Kerberos. So most existing wireless
networks' implementations are already set up to protect customer transaction
information.

An emerging area for retail wireless
deployment is the use of handheld sales terminals, which can process credit and
debit cards (ones that include cash-drawer attachments are rare, Riso says,
because of bulk and theft concerns). While an obvious technology for ballpark
food sales, farmers markets, and flea markets, these can also let companies
quickly handle sudden increases in customers, as well as make sales in areas
such as garden centers and car-rental lots that involve bulky items and large
floorplans. Movie and event ticket sales are another obvious venue.

Symbol is also investigating the use of
wireless LANs to push sales messages and discount offerings to customers that
scan in items while shopping. The idea is to offer the benefits of today's club
cards -- providing discount coupons at the register in return for tracking
customers' purchase habits -- during the shopping act itself, where the reward
is more connected to the purchase or expression of interest. I'm dubious about
such wireless marketing, as it requires work on the shopper's part -- scanning
items -- in hopes of getting a discount, and will inevitably result in more
rejected offers than
accepted ones. I think most customers will treat it as an annoyance, as they did
those flashing coupon boxes that some supermarkets installed in the aisles
during the 1990s.

However dubious the
wireless marketing future is, it's clear that wireless brings strong
point-of-sales and self-service benefits to retailers, who already have most of
the infrastructure to take advantage of them.

FEATURE STORY:Is 802.11a Dead on Arrival?

First, Apple Computer announced earlier this month that it would use the
forthcoming 802.11g 54Mbps wireless LAN technology in its next generation of
notebooks rather than 802.11a, which also has a theoretical maximum of 54Mbps.
Then, last week, Brent Mosbrook, a product manager at wireless chipmaker
Intersil, provided an overview of 802.11 chipset sales that showed 802.11a sales
have already flattened at a paltry 5 million units a year -- globally -- while
overall 802.11 chipset unit growth tripled in 2002, with 35 million chipsets
installed that year. It's expected to reach 140 million units in 2005, he says.
Mosbrook spoke at the International Wirelsss Packaging Consortium technical
workshop on in-building wireless. (Rival chipmaker Atheros Communications says
about 1 million 802.11a devices were sold in 2002 -- devices sold is typically a
lower number than chipsets sold -- but expects sales to grow in the coming
years.)

What's going on with 802.11a? First, Mosbrook noted, most vendors have
decided to skip 802.11a-only products in favor of dual-band 802.11a/b products,
since there are so many 802.11b radios already deployed, and 802.11a technology
uses a different spectrum band (5GHz rather than 2.4GHz) than 802.11b, so the
two standards aren't and can't be compatible. 802.11g, on the other hand, is
compatible with 802.11b. Second, 802.11a has a much shorter effective distance
-- half that of 802.11b. Third, the demand for 802.11a/b chipsets, and the
anticipated volume of 802.11a/g and 802.11g chipsets has already made chipset
prices cheaper for them than for 802.11a-only chipsets. All that makes 802.11g
-- whose standard is not yet formalized, so there are no shipping products as
yet -- the likely successor to 802.11b. After all, it will accommodate today's
installed base of 802.11b out of the box, and have comparable signal reach.

However, Mosbrook says 802.11a has a place. Although its signal range is
shorter, it supports eight to 12 channels versus 802.11b's and 802.11g's three
channels, so it can accommodate significantly more users within its signal
range. That's important in crowded areas such as conference rooms and cubicle
farms, although it does pretty much require users to have 802.11a/b or 802.11a/g
radios in their wireless devices if they want to have wireless access
elsewhere.

Companies looking to deploy 802.11 technology, or adding faster variants to
existing 802.11b networks, need to be sure they understand the limits and
advantages of 802.11a and 802.11g. I suspect that 802.11g will quickly replace
802.11b in new devices, from laptops to PDA cards to wireless access points, and
the real question for IT will be "Do we need 802.11a for our densely trafficked
areas as well?"

Ironically, as evidence mounts that most 802.11 traffic will take place in
the 2.4GHz spectrum, U.S. Sens. George Allen (R-Va.) and Barbara Boxer
(D-Calif.) have introduced a bill that would urge the Federal Communications
Commission to allocate more spectrum to the 5GHz range used by 802.11a. The
senators want to increase the 5GHz spectrum range's allocation from a 325MHz
band to a 580MHz band. The 2.4GHz spectrum range has an 83.5MHz band
available, and it is used by many types of devices, including cordless phones,
microwave ovens, security systems, baby monitors, and garage-door openers, not
just 802.11b/g devices.

The intent of the bill is good, but I think it's the wrong part of the
spectrum to be expanding. One positive effect would be to have the U.S.
unlicensed 5GHz spectrum range match that in Europe, which would make product
design and deployment easier. Today, 802.11a devices must be localized based on
their markets' spectrum allocations or adapt to varying national spectrum
allocations automatically. But getting more 2.4GHz spectrum would be more
useful.

From our editorsDon't Miss A BeatIt's a fast-paced business, and it's easy to miss a
breaking development or not realize at the time that something is significant.
But IT Wireless Insider subscribers aren't stuck in the present: You
can read past
issues of the IT Wireless Insider online any time you want, without
having to search your email box.

PRODUCT SCAN:The Latest in Wireless Products and
Tech

California Amplifier says it has developed "smart
antenna" technology for 802.11 networks that lets an access point form transmit
and receive beams, cancel interference and better use high multipath,
non-line-of-sight channels, thus substantially improving performance. The
company expects to see 802.11 chipsets in about a year that include its
technology. The issue of smart antennas is increasingly important as companies
seek to reduce leakage outside the building and to get the highest throughout
within the building. Wireless access rates drop off very quickly, losing a third
of their speed just 15 to 30 feet away in older buildings with concrete walls
and wooden doors, testing by 802.11 chipmaker Intersil has shown. Signal quality
also degrades over distance and through construction materials.

Last issue , we
reported that Walker Wireless, a New Zealand broadband telecommunications
company, will commercially deploy IPWireless mobile broadband technology across
the major New Zealand markets, and we wondered why this technology wasn't in any
major U.S. area. (The cellular technology that IPWireless uses, UMTS-TDD is
supposed to run at 3Mbps, compared to standard WCDMA's 500Kbps to 1Mbps.) Well,
just a couple days after that edition of IT Wireless Insider appeared,
IPWireless announced that Clearwater Technologies is deploying the service in
Jacksonville, Fla., whose metro area has a population exceeding 1 million.
Clearwater is aiming for the 20% of residences and 50% of businesses that are in
areas where DSL and cable modem service aren't available.

Other notable recent product and technology news include
the following:

AirMagnet has announced the Duo Wireless Laptop
Analyzer, which lets IT users manage, assess, troubleshoot, and secure 802.11a
and 802.11b wireless networks simultaneously.

Berkeley Varitronics Systems has released the
$1,000 Mantis wireless receiver designed for identifying, installing, and
optimizing Bluetooth wireless devices and connections. The instrument locates
any nearby Bluetooth devices, identifies them, and follows their
frequency-hopping signature to allow detailed RSSI measurement in true dBm,
packet-error-rate breakdowns as well as other device parameters and
identification.

Atheros Communications has become the first chipmaker
to receive the Wi-FI interoperability certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance
for a dual-band (802.11a/b) CardBus reference design. CardBus is used in
laptop designs for both internal and external peripherals.

Devicemaker Intermec Technologies has licensed the
SymPhone System, the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony software
from TeleSym. SymPhone transforms Intermec's 700 Series Pocket PC handheld
into a phone that can make and receive peer-to-peer voice calls over standard
IEEE 802.11b wireless LANs. Optional products let calls be made over PBXs and
standard telephone switched networks.

One of the biggest issues in making wireless
useful to mobile workers is widespread availability. Wireless LANs have proven
themselves in fixed locations, from conference rooms to warehouses, for several
years. But what captures many users' imagination is the hot-spot concept, where
they can be away from work or home and still be able to connect to the Internet
and to other network services. This month, a great example of what needs to
happen actually happened to make mobile wireless something people can count on:
The City of Long Beach, Calif., announced it was deploying an 802.11b hot-spot
network along its main downtown shopping street. The city of 400,000 near Los
Angeles's busy seaport has set up free access at cafés along a four-block
stretch of Pine Street, and it plans on adding such access to Long Beach
airport, a regional hub that scaled back after military and aerospace industry
slowdowns in the 1980s but is now growing again, and to other areas in and near
downtown. Long Beach has several commercial corridors that would be fairly
easily to bring hot-spot access to.

The city estimates the cost of the current
deployment is just $3,000 per year, which it believes is will easily recoup by
generating more business for local businesses, which will in turn bring in extra
tax revenues. The city's free hot-spot system's home page, which users see when
they first log in, includes information on city services, local facilities, and
local businesses.

If cities throughout the country duplicated Long
Beach's effort, there would quickly be a critical mass of hot spots, so business
users could count on them. Smaller cities like Long Beach that have regional
airports -- Oakland, Calif.; Ontario, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; Colorado Springs,
Colo.; Austin, Texas; Milwaukee; Detroit; Cincinnati; Philadelphia; Charlotte,
N.C.; Providence, R.I.; Hartford, Conn.; and Manchester, N.H.; just to name a
few -- could also use these systems to encourage more business travelers. They
would stand in sharp relief to the major airports that so far have limited
wireless access to big-budget travelers (a dying breed) in airline clubs and a
few public airport areas via fairly expensive subscription and one-time-access
services.

Not that commerical hot-spot networks, such as the
T-Mobile service at a couple thousand Starbucks coffeehouses, are bad. They
provide a common logon and user experience in areas that business travelers tend
to be in. But the price is still in the premium category, excluding the mass
user base needed before businesses can rely on wireless hot spots as a conduit.
Such commercial services can and should focus on issues such as supporting
various security schemes, so business travelers with sensitive information (or
working for companies whose IT departments strongly prioritize data security)
get a real value-add for the access charges. And commercial services should
benefit from the existence of free public hot-spots in major business zones,
since they will seed the market with actual users who may become actual
customers.

In a related development, InCode Telecom is deploying a pilot program with Canadian
phone company Bell Canada to add 802.11b access points to public telephones in
high-traffic locations. The aim is to make hot-spot access more ubiquitous by
creating 300-foot zones around payphones in places like train stations, public
squares, convention centers, and corporate campuses. Such an effort by a U.S.
phone company to such hot spots could also help hot spots go from exotic to
common, which needs to happen for businesses to rely on them. A combination of
local free hot spots and broad-reach commercial deployments such as T-Mobile's
and Bell Canada's will do the trick.

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